Boring–I know, but as boring as finances can be, it’s really important that we take the time to do a little planning to make sure that we will end up meeting our goals. I already told you here about how Peter and I are saving to buy a house and I mentioned the fabulous budget spreadsheet that I got from Kasey at Thrifty Little Blog, but what else are we doing to make our house dreams come true?
The first thing I did when I decided that we were really going to start saving was look for a place to put my money, and since I’m not one to stuff cash under the mattress, I did this is the form of online savings accounts. Our fabulously talented friend who works in finance, Caroline, tells us that we should be making riskier investments than just putting our money into savings. I completely understand the logic behind where she’s coming from, but because I’m not not much of a gambler, we’re hoping to buy this house sooner rather than later, and because we may be undergoing some pretty big life changes in the next year, I want our money to be safe.
So, per advice from one of our other fabulous friends we opened up the computer and headed over to Bankrate.com. Bank Rate has a ton of free information on subjects like debt management, credit cards, and taxes to name a few, but we visited because of it’s ability to compare different interest rates for savings accounts and money market accounts. At that time, we chose the bank offering the highest interest rate at 1.8% APY. Since then our bank has dropped all the way down to 1.4%. As you can see by the screenshot of the search that I did this evening, a whole new crop of banks is at the top.
Now, we’re not going to move our money just because our bank is no longer leading with the highest interest rate but in a few more months we will re-evaluate where we’re housing our cash. Changing banks may be a huge pain,but now that online banks are so prevalent it’s easy to store your money across the country with just the click of a button. Kinda crazy, huh? We have a local bank, but for us keeping our savings far away from our checking accounts helps them remain untouched.
Saving for multiple purposes? Go ahead and open more savings accounts. It’s easy to look at a lump sum and think that it’s a lot of money, but if you separate it out into categories, then you’ll know exactly where you stand on each item that you’re saving for.
Does anyone have any banking tips that I’m overlooking? Or better yet is anyone having any luck with higher risk investments? We’d love to hear about it.
I’m such a wimp when it comes to risking my money, but when you’re planning on using a big chunk of cash in the near future, it’s always nice to know it will be there!
When I was saving for a home, I put a good portion in a six month CD so that it would grow somewhat faster than it would in my savings and I knew it would stay safe.
Thanks Kasey! As always, this is great advice!